


and there was none to lament my annihilation

by Catherines_Collections



Series: rewards of benevolence [2]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Falling In Love, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Robotics, if you don't cry i'm not doing my job right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 20:13:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14528289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: Pete meets him three doors down from hisRobotics 3032: the study of ethics in engineeringclassroom.It's one link in an endless chain of events.





	and there was none to lament my annihilation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveinamaltshop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveinamaltshop/gifts).



> I HOPE YOU CRY. 
> 
> I kid, I kid! So, I wrote these bones burn for you on a whim & people really liked it & then NINA - my Muse - loved it & we started talking about cute/sweet prequel ideas & well. I couldn't just let her be happy with fluff, right? So, Nina, my dearest muse- this is for you & I truly hope you enjoy it! (And look!! I included both of our headcanons (; )
> 
> All of this tech talk is pretty bold coming from someone who knows Nothing about technology, hm...
> 
> Title - and other things - taken from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ;).
> 
> I own nothing, enjoy!

Pete meets him three doors down from his _Robotics 3032: the study of ethics in engineering_ classroom _._ He’s coasting down the hallway, racing before the door closes and all the front seats are taken.

He’s brushing shoulders, ignoring curses, slipping past crowds and sliding in between the slim spaces of absent bodies racing the clock. The door’s nearly in sight, just one more corner, and-

He topples into someone and sends them flying across the floor.

“Oh my god,” Pete says, watching the guy he’s just knocked to the floor groan. He rushes over, stumbling over the papers he dropped when the guy fell. “I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t even see you there. I was in a rush this morning and my car broke down and it’s my first day back and-,”

Pete’s still babbling when the kid tilts his head back, groaning, and meets Pete’s eyes.

Pete’s never seen the ocean outside of pictures his Mom’s stored, or the few home videos his grandparents used to show him. But the guy Pete has knocked over blinks up at him with eyes torn between baby blues and midnight skies, and all Pete can think is _ocean eyes_.

He feels like he’s being swept away.

“I am,” Pete says, trying to catch his breath, letting the adrenaline finally bleed out and embarrassment set in, “so fucking sorry. Here, let me- let me help you! My name’s Pete, and I’m still super sorry.”

“Um,” Ocean eyes says, squinting, and Pete realizes with belated horror that he’s knocked his glasses off. “Hi?”

Ocean eyes takes Pete’s hand, and when Pete pulls him up he swears he feels sparks. The same kind he gets when he’s been messing with a machine for too long or trying to fit specific coding together just right. It’s electric coursing through his veins.

Once ocean eyes is standing but still squinting and Pete remembers _glasses_ in an afterthought, bending down to get them. The guy is only about an inch shorter than Pete, but he still has to tilt down to place the glasses on the dude’s head.

Ocean eyes blinks. Pete’s heart kind of melts on the spot.

“I’m-” Pete starts, again, but ocean eyes interrupts him.

“You don’t need to apologize again, really. It’s cool.” He’s blushing when he says it, and Pete’s heart is in his throat.

“I’m Pete, by the way,” Pete rubs the back of his neck with one hand and offers the other out to shake. “In case you missed it before.”

The _when I knocked you to the ground_ goes unsaid, but Pete can feel himself blushing as a warm smile spreads across ocean eyes’ face.

“Hi, Pete,” Ocean eyes says. “I’m Patrick, and I’m guessing all of these papers are yours then?”

Time clicks back into place.

“ _Shit_!”

Pete’s on the ground scrambling to store all the stray sheets into a pile, and Patrick bends down to help him.

Pete groan when Patrick hands the stack to him, “Thanks so much. But fuck, I am _so_ late. There’s no way I’m getting in now.”

“Get in where?” Patrick asks, and Pete sighs.

“A class that’s already screwing with my credits. There’s no way the old bastard’s going to let me in now, _fuck_.”

Patrick frowns in sympathy, shifts slightly, and suddenly Pete notices the coffee stains on his shirt and the near empty coffee cup splayed on the ground. His stomach sinks as he voices the obvious, tone hollow.

“I spilled your coffee on your shirt.”

Patrick blinks again, utters a quiet, "Oh _,"_ as he looks down at himself like he’s just now noticing the scalding coffee splattered across his chest. “No, I mean it’s fine-,”

Pete sighs, resists the temptation to bury his head in his hands from sheer embarrassment, “It’s really really not.”

Sunlight shines through some panels of the glass ceiling above them, the light striking Patrick’s eyes so that they look blue enough to drown in. Pete makes a decision.

“Let me buy you a new one,” he starts, grin stretching across his face. “There’s this awesome cafe right around the corner. I’ve got nothing but time now if you want to...”

Patrick blushes lightly when he smiles. Pete stares, lets his heart kick around in his chest.

“Okay,” Patrick nods. “Yeah. Coffee sound cool.”

He hands Pete the rest of his papers as they walk out the door. Pete dumps them in the trash when Patrick looks away.

They get coffee and Patrick tells him about being a music engineering major, face lighting up as talks. Pete takes it all in.

When he gets home, he drops the class. With the same flick of his finger invites Patrick’s over for a movie.

.  


Tuesdays and Thursdays become unofficial date days, with Pete too scared to call them anything else, as in Pete makes Patrick spend the entire days with him in his apartment watching movies or listening to records.

Patrick complains through each _Terminator_ movie, but Pete makes it up to him by pulling out out one of Bowie's records.

The hours of complaining are completely worth it for the way Patrick's face lights up.

Weeks turn into months, and Patrick becomes the electrical current running through Pete’s veins- sharp and insistent and unrelenting. The constant humming that keeps the blood pumping in rhythm, makes all the tissue blend right.

He tells him as much their fourth time hanging out after Patrick’s music class, studying in Pete’s apartment.

Patrick just laughs. Pete decides he wants to hear that sound forever.  


.

 

When Pete finally gathers the guts to asks Patrick on a _formal_ date, Patrick accepts with a wave of his hand, and doesn’t look up from what he’s working on at Pete’s couch.

“About time,” Patrick says, scribbling down something Pete can only assume to be musically genius. Pete doesn’t say anything, just takes it all in when Patrick glances up and meets Pete’s eyes.

He looks soft, in the moment. Auburn hair a scattered array on his head, glasses thick and framing his face, baby blues blinking slowly through them.

Pete pulls out his phone and takes a picture before Patrick has the chance to move. He blanches.

“Okay,” Pete nods, mock serious, and Patrick huffs. “On one condition: I get to take as many pictures of you as I want.”

Patrick sighs and falls back onto the couch like he’s come to expect this from Pete in the month that he’s known him. Pete may be more than a little in love with him.

“Fine, whatever,” Patrick relents, adding a hurried: _“I better be getting some good food out of this!”_ when Pete only cackles.

  
.  


Their first date goes like this: kind chaos and a vegan restaurant with prices they can both afford. Pete doesn’t disagree when Patrick calls it _heaven_. Though there are plenty of other things he disagrees with Patrick about.

“You’re insane, really,” Patrick says, meeting Pete’s eyes and picking at his food. “One year from graduating and you’re wasting your time with a freshman, what a pity.”

There’s a glint in Patrick’s eye when he says it. Pete’s careful, smooth with nonchalance when he adds, “Oh yeah, I pity the fuck out of everyone who missed out on the chance to hook up with a musical prodigy.”

Patrick glances down at his food and smiles, says, “You’re going places, you know.”

And Pete smiles back, reaches across the table to brush his thumb across Patrick’s knuckles, says, “Yeah. But not without you.”

Patrick’s smile is the most beautiful thing Pete’s ever seen. He wants a million copies.

Patrick laughs when he tells him this, says, “Alright, build something like it then. We both know you could do it with your eyes closed.”

Pete shakes his head. “Nope,” he says, popping the _p_. “There’s no way in hell I could ever get all of _that_ right. You are one of a kind, Patrick Stump.”

Patrick snorts into his water, and Pete doesn’t even try to cover his laugh.

He takes another picture.

_For memory’s sake,_ he says when Patrick rolls his eyes.  
   
He takes enough pictures of Patrick that he has to download a whole new unit of storage.

Eventually he starts printing them. Patrick blushes when he finds them, and Pete tilts his head up in Patrick’s lap with a grin.  


.  
  


On their third date, Patrick takes him back to his dorm.

They don’t even make it to the bed before Pete’s hands are everywhere, and Patrick’s making the prettiest noises he’s ever heard.

“You should let me record you sometimes,” Pete groans, eyes taking in Patrick’s flushed face and harsh pants as Pete flicks his wrist just right. “Gotta archive that voice for the history books, I swear.”

“Pete, I- _fuck_!”

Pete smirks, buries his face into Patrick’s neck, grins into his skin like a burn, “Is that a yes?”

“You’re such an asshole, _yes_. _Fine_. Whatever, _just-_ ,”

Pete bites his neck and Patrick cries out, arches into him.

“Gonna get you to sing for me, baby,” Pete croons, making a mental note to buy a new recorder as he falls to his knees.  


.  


Pete calls their meeting _fate_ whenever it's brought up, pins the words up with all the pictures sprawled across his walls. Patrick rolls his eyes, but he smiles when Pete curls into him.

Patrick doesn’t have to say it back for Pete to know he agrees.  


.  


Classes continue in a whirlwind of procrastination and _Patrick_.

Pete spends too many nights in the laboratory, cramming and connecting. He’s got excellent marks in everything from _AI: The Humanities of Technology_ to _The English Language Through the Binary Lens._

Pete builds, constructs words and metal alike, fingers tangling with wires until they make something that sparks.

Somewhere in-between, Patrick joins him. He works on his theory projects, playing music and humming in the background while Pete works. Everything feels so meant in those moments.

After a few months, Pete presents Patrick with the AI prototype he’s been working on. It’s all wires and bolts now, but it’s _there_. Patrick just blinks.

“It’s going to be amazing, ‘Trick,” Pete breathes, walks him through the diagram, and Patrick stares at it, lost. Pete beams. “Just you wait and see.”

Patrick hums, runs a finger along cool metal and Pete watches, hypnotized.

“Did you ever read Frankenstein?” Patrick asks. Pete laughs.

“My feelings were those of rage and revenge,” Pete quotes, fingers weaving out of the wires to grab Patrick’s hand as he continues. “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.”

Patrick sighs, but takes his hand and squeezes.

“But that cannot be,” Patrick quotes back, and something shoots down Pete’s spine when he grins, “the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union.”

The machine gets forgotten in favor of Patrick’s lips.

Pete kisses him breathless, hands rushing everywhere, like Pete can pull all the words from him.  


.  
 

A few weeks later Pete brings the recorder.

“Sing me something,” Pete begs, fresh from the lab and running on caffeine and adrenaline. “Pretty please with extra everything on top.”

Patrick sighs as he leans back into Pete on his apartment couch, his project abandoned in favor of Pete and exasperation, “You’re not used to not getting what you want, huh?”

“Nope,” Pete says, cuddling closer. “Especially not when what I want is for my beautiful boyfriend to sing me some of his amazing songs. Most of which I was promised to hear.”

Patrick laughs into his shoulder. Pete holds his breath.

“God, you’re a brat,” Patrick says, but he’s sitting up and pulling himself off his couch to grab his guitar. “Alright, what do you want to hear first?”  
  
“ _Anything_ ,” Pete says, meaning it.

He presses the little red button on the recorder and Patrick’s voice fills the room.

He doesn’t ever want it to stop.  


.  
  
  
The semester flies by.

It’s fall and then it’s spring. It’s summer and they’re both ready for it.

Pete gets _A’s_ and _B’s_. Patrick gets all _A’s_ , recommendations, and promises of future publications.

Patrick’s all smiles and light when he tells him, and Pete nods with a matching grin.

“You deserve it, dude,” Pete says, and Patrick rolls his eyes, still grinning so wide Pete’s almost afraid it might crack his face.

“Yeah, well. It’s still just arbitrary stuff. I haven’t even officially made it into the program or anything, but-”

“You’ll make it in,” Pete says, and Patrick glances at him again.

Patrick asks, shy and smiling, “You think so?” 

Pete nods, heartbeat in his ears when Patrick laughs.

Finals finish and then they’re both exhausted to the bone.

“We could get a place together,” Patrick suggests, over breakfast at Pete’s apartment, not looking at Pete with a shrug. Life consists of school and Patrick and music. “Save up for the semester, too. If you wanted to.”

They spend the rest of the night searching for a place and the weekend taking tours.

They find a place on their fourth tour, sign a lease two days later, and spend the day after they’ve officially moved in memorizing each other.  
  


.  
 

Summer is listening to Patrick sing at local coffee shops and Pete performing every few poetry nights. School gets forgotten and the nights come alive at Patrick’s hand.

It’s stolen kisses tipsy promises, and Pete thinking about promise rings.

“You move fast, Wentz,” Patrick tells him, pink cheeked and swollen lips. There’s something daring in his eyes that Pete could write piles of poems about trying to define.

Patrick kisses him again before he has a chance to respond.

.  
  
  
Summer ends too soon and school follows too quickly.

They lose track of their dates because Patrick’s always with Pete anyway. They mark their days by classes and whose turn it is to the dishes. They become each other’s centers, create their own gravitational pull that only holds them in.

Patrick says something about touring one of Pete’s workshops for a research project he has to do for a new elective. Pete kisses him, pulls back as, “God, I love you,” tumbles out into the open. The currents in his body seizes up.

Patrick hides behind his coffee cup, but Pete can tell he’s biting down a smile from the way his cheeks are stretched pink.

Patrick shrugs, and when he sets his mug on the table Pete sees that he was right about the grin. He pushes forward until their chest-to-chest and he can feel Patrick’s heartbeat through his clothes.

“Yeah,” Patrick murmurs, lips searching out Pete’s, letting out a small sigh when he finds them. “I think we’re on the same page with that one.”

Patrick kisses like the same storm his eyes promise to be. Pete burrows in, doesn’t take it as a warning.  


.  
  
  
Moving in together solves lots of problems, but it creates some, too.

The fights aren’t new, but their topics are.

Their worst fights come out of the times where Pete doesn’t sleep or leave the lab for days at a time, and Patrick brings him food and water because he knows he’s forgotten about it. Sometimes Pete forgets that he’s not the machine. It isn’t Patrick’s job to remind him, but he does it anyway.

Patrick’s not clingy. He’s not as openly touchy as Pete, but after a week of Pete ignoring him in his lab, Patrick walks in and rips his headphones off.

“What the hell-,” Pete starts, shock morphing into anger until he spins around to meet Patrick’s face.

Patrick’s stoic when he says, “You’ve been down here for a week. Go take a shower.” Pete doesn’t argue.

After, he comes out to Patrick huddled on their couch. Pete approaches him, slow.

“I don’t need a lot,” Patrick starts, not looking up from his mug, finger brushing the spoon inside. “I don’t ask you for much and I love you, but this? You cutting me off completely for weeks at a time? That isn’t fair.”

Pete lets the silence stretch on.

“Don’t do that again,” Patrick finishes, glancing up to meet Pete’s eyes.

Pete shakes his head, moves closer to takes Patrick’s hand to intertwine their fingers.

“I won’t,” Pete says. The lie tastes bitter on his tongue.

Patrick offers him a forced smile.  


.  
  
  
Pete tries, but the thoughts and theories don't leave him alone.

He sneaks out of bed to wires and electricity and metal.

In the morning Patrick leans in the lab doorway, t-shirt and boxers and glasses, watching.

Pete doesn’t notice.  
  
Eventually, Pete stops coming to bed.  
  
Eventually, Patrick stops asking him to.  
  
.  
  
  
“I love you,” Pete tells him, leaving the lab long enough to steal breakfast before Patrick has to leave for class.

Patrick moves the food on his plate around with his fork.

“I know,” he says, _but what’s that going to fix?_

.  
  
  
Pete’s a semester away from graduation, and his final project still isn’t finished. Patrick’s still working on his music merging theory after finally gaining an acceptance into the school of music.

Pete forgets about their celebration dinner. He comes home after class to find their apartment empty, and a note on the fridge.

_Went out with friends. Thanks for the celebration dinner. Don’t wait up._

Pete spends more time in the lab than out of it.

Patrick doesn’t speak when he leaves Pete food anymore. Their conversations become stilted, fragmented around the edges. Pete whispers, _I’m sorry_ in his ear when he crawls into bed next to him after four days of avoidance, _I’ll be better_. Patrick doesn’t move.

_Just a few more months_ , Pete thinks.

A few more months and Pete will come back to bed and Patrick's smile. He's already counting the days.

.  
  
  
Pete works the whole night through, the door shutting like an echo he can’t get away from. When the clock finally reads _four_ he falls into bed, more than half-missing the pair of cold feet that usually occupy it. After he graduates, the first thing he’s going to do is throw Patrick the biggest surprise celebration party.

Sleep is elusive. Pete falls in and out too many times to keep track, missing the missing piece of his bedroom. When he wakes up next, it’s to arms curled around Patrick’s pillow and a knock at the door.

Pete crawls out of bed slow, a sleep slowed thought of Patrick must have lost his key entering his head as quick as it leaves as he walks. When he answers the door it’s with a curse on his lips, but arms outreached to pull Patrick in with a chorus of _I’m so sorrys_ and _this is the last time, I swear_ , meaning them both. Only–

Only, it's not Patrick.

There are two policemen in his face at six in the morning stumbling over themselves and telling him, "I'm so sorry Mr. Wentz, but there's been an accident and you were the first person the records had on file to contact."

There are words and hands on his shoulder, and someone saying _Patrick_ and other things, but he stops listening at the name. The world just kind of, slips away as the policemen talk, and Pete slides down the door.

He doesn't even realize it until there's shouting - _"Mr. Wentz, can you hear me?"_ \- and he's being lifted up and pulled inside, but it doesn't matter.

As quickly as the world’s built itself up, it comes crashing down.  
  


.  
  
  
Pete crawls back into their bed and pulls Patrick’s pillow to his chest, buries his face in it.

The people dressed in uniforms follow him to him room. He wonders who they are and why they keep asking if he’s okay.

.  
  
  
Pete doesn’t remember the next few days.

There are blurs of movement. Voices and hands, someone saying, “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’m so so sorry.”

There’s laughter that makes his throat raw. Someone pulls him away because they don’t understand how funny the words are, now there’s no one left to laugh when Pete starts screaming about _fate._

There’s chaos and black and dark with too many bodies that aren’t the _right_ one until the world compresses into itself.

.  
  
  
Patrick is _gonegonegone_ , hit and run, dead on impact and not _here_. Pete never even got to see him in the hospital. He couldn’t go to the funeral.

But he would be here if Pete had paid attention to him like he should have.

The world isn’t bright, anymore.

It’s dark and dark and getting darker.

Pete plays Patrick’s voice on the recorder until the battery dies.

.  
  
  
Pete doesn’t remember dropping out of school. He just- doesn’t go back.

Less than a month left. He throws up and wakes up beside the toilet.

Eventually, people stop searching and questions stop getting asked. He leaves the apartment, takes a box full of things he’ll never open again and ends up in the bunker his grandfather left to him. The one he used to use for research.

There’s a chair, desk, beat up old clock, and a few drawers.

Pete drops his tools and sets the box into one of the drawers after he clears them out from bugs.

He takes a breath and closes the door behind, lets the light disappear behind him.

  
.  
  
  
There’s oil in his mouth and metal digging into his side, and he bites his lip harder to add blood to the equation. The pictures in the desk are burning a hole through the metal trying to blend into his skin.

Patrick’s smiling from somewhere in that drawer. Pete wants to see it again.

_A million copies_ , Pete thinks.

But he only needs to make one.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> All of this stems from watching too much Astro Boy as a child. I'm not even kidding when I say it's probably my number 1 formative influence. OH WELL!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I really hope you enjoyed, and comments and kudos are Greatly appreciated. I'm rhymesofblau on tumblr if you want to scream with me:).


End file.
